Egami Shigeru’s text, ‘The Way of Karate Beyond Technique’, originally published in 1975, has been re-issued by Kodansha as ‘The Heart of Karate-Do’. This book has long been unavailable and Kodansha has done a real service re-issuing it.

The re-issued text is a ‘revised edition’, but as far as I see, except for re-doing all the photographs except for the historical ones, the text is identical to the original.

Egami Shigeru was an original student of Funakoshi Ginchin in Japan. His book is a marvelous recounting of his observations of 40 years of change. You get a solid view of earlier technique and his own long research on what karate should be.

I read this book when I was quite young (about 14 I think) and remember enjoying it immensely. The only reason I got it was because it was the only karate book the local library (a very small one) had (good choice)!